


The Attack of the Venusian Cupidae

by Slumber



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:58:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slumber/pseuds/Slumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mrs Zabini's multiple husbands are explained, and Blaise Zabini copes with being a wizarding timelord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Attack of the Venusian Cupidae

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [these thoughts](http://slumber.livejournal.com/283841.html), and the prompt **Cupid**.

Blaise was five years old the first time his father died.  
  
The house was quiet and still, the elves busy bustling around doing what they thought they were supposed to do. He stayed in his room and then his mother came in, smiling at him with her rich red lips and kneeling in front of him.  
  
"Do you understand what's just happened, love?" she asked, her long fingers busy tying the bow on his robes.  
  
He nodded. "Yes, mother."  
  
"Good," she said. "Good, my darling." Then she kissed him on the forehead and got to her feet, smoothing out the wrinkles on her long mourning robes before she held out a hand for Blaise to take.  
  
He stayed at his mother's side for all of the ceremony, even when the minister asked his mother to come up to the stage and say a few words about his father. (Blaise followed her to the dais, stayed a little way behind, watched the crowd as they dabbed at their eyes and sniffled into their handkerchiefs.) At one point his mother's voice broke, and the minister apologized, and then Blaise took his mother's hand and led her back down to their seat.  
  
"We are so sorry for your loss," he heard multiple times that day, and in response he stayed quiet, let his mother acknowledge their condolences. She gave him a single rose to throw in after his coffin ("He's always liked roses," she murmured beside him.) and he watched as the rest of them started to bury his father's coffin with dirt and soil, until all that remained was a mound of fresh ground, a tombstone-- (Giovanni Zabini, beloved husband, loving father)-- and fresh flowers to mark the grave.   
  
By the time everyone else had left it was nearly sunset, and Blaise was beginning to feel the itchiness and discomfort that came with wearing the starched formal robes he wore that day. His mother picked him up, kissed his cheek and told him he'd been such a good boy that day, such a patient boy, and Apparated them back to their manor.   
  
"About time you lot returned; I'm  _starving_ ," a man that didn't look like anyone he'd ever known said. He was sprawled in the sitting room settee, arms dangling round its back and legs propped up on the coffee table. He was fair of skin and his hair was a mess of muddy brown. "What shall we have for dinner?"  
  
"The least you could have done was make it while we were away," his mother said, setting Blaise down and walking over to the man. "Your lips are too thin."  
  
"I've got sideburns!"  
  
"Your nose is too long.."  
  
"I can tell you something else that's too long."  
  
"In front of  _Blaise_ , really?"   
  
"Sorry--" the man looked around Blaise's mother, eyes catching Blaise's, and his face turned tender. "Hello, Blaise."  
  
If Blaise had been curious (and he had been, mildly), the way he said those words erased any doubts. "Are you my daddy?"  
  
"Yes, son," his father said. "Yes, I am."  
  
***  
  
His father died two more times before he could even set foot in Hogwarts. The first time there was something called the Daleks running amok, the second it was Cybermen or other. He knew not everyone's father was likely to return after dying, that much at least his mother told him, so he did try very hard to look sorry and sad the next times he's had to attend his father's funerals.  
  
It was easier not to look too sorry, then-- the first funeral he'd been in a foul mood early that day, the second he'd been sleepy after only pretending to fall asleep but really staying up late to play with his Christmas presents-- because at least nobody expected him to be very sad considering they thought it was his stepfathers that had died.  
  
He didn't really understand all of it, not entirely. His parents tried to explain, something about time lords and alternate dimensions and a broken tardis, a honeymoon gone wrong, but at the end of it all he knew was this: his father can die, but he'll come back. He always will.  
  
For Blaise, that's more than enough.  
  
***  
  
By the time Blaise was a teenager, he'd grown slightly more wise to the ways of being some kind of wizarding time lord hybrid. (The wizarding part he'd always been iffy about, as his parents barely ever used wands and when they did, they only waved about little pudgy things that made weird noises and blinked blue lights, pulling it off by some well placed perception filters or other, as they tried to explain to him once. He can somehow use magic-- "a side effect of having been created in this world," he was able to catch from his father's mad rantings at one point-- but his parents, as far as he was concerned, could not.)  
  
In any case he knew there to be a certain bevy of truths that he could always hold dear to his heart. He knew that at any given time his parents would be off fighting to save the world from some threat, different and not to be mistaken from the threats that faced Harry Potter, of course ("mustn't interfere in that one, oh no, it has been  _written_ ," his mother said). He knew that any of those moments could result in a death, the likes of which could mean him returning to a new father-guised-as-a-stepfather, only half the time he didn't much like (he'd usually get so used to the current form that any new ones irritated or irked him til he realized really, it was still his father underneath all that). He knew that the Aurors would then come to pay his family a visit; sometime in the last few years his mother had turned from perpetual victim to perpetual suspect, but he was only glad that she always remembered her manners and never actually died on him, because  _that_  would be awfully difficult to explain to anyone. And he knew that, despite all the bickering his parents did before, during, or after threats, at the end of the day they  _liked_  it, and they came home to each other.  
  
"Son, we've got a problem," his father said, popping in one day in the middle of Potions.  
  
"Excuse me," Professor Snape began to bristle, to which his father only nodded his hello and signaled Blaise over.  
  
"Hope you don't mind, important business we've got to discuss-- Blaise, come here please."  
  
"I've-- we're in the middle of--"  
  
"Oh, it's only Potions, I can teach you all of that and then some in under five minutes," his father said, winking at Professor Snape, who had turned an interesting shade of red. "The Beta Gamma Gamma population was well reknowned for it, you know. Spent a year or so in their colony and picked up a thing or two there."  
  
At that point, Blaise could only choose to follow his father, lest he offend his professor further and embarrass Blaise in front of his classmates. "I'm not your son," he said as he walked up to him. He cast a withering look Snape's way. "Sorry, Professor."  
  
Once they were alone, Blaise having dragged his father to a shaded alcove where few would pass by, he made his father tell him the story from beginning to end. It was a difficult task-- usually his father dove into anything and everything head-first and simply figured things out as he went along, but Blaise was a little bit more disciplined than that and twice as stubborn. He'd refuse to do anything until he knew exactly what he was headed into, a fact his father took some time to get used to given the type of companions he'd apparently kept before his mother came along.  
  
"Venusian Cupidae," his father told him. "Your culture has painted them to be naked winged babies with love-struck arrows but the real ones, the ones that come from Venus-- well, they're slightly more lethal than that. They dip their arrows in some kind of aphrodisiac and they feed off the energy produced from the, er--" at this point his father trailed off, perhaps realizing that his son was only just fifteen.   
  
"Father," Blaise said, deciding to take matters into his own hands. "Are you to tell me these cupids fire lust arrows at people and get off from the mad sex that ensues?"  
  
"Ah. Yes. That. Oh, dear. You were perhaps a little too young for that, weren't you? Your mother wouldn't like that, would she?"  
  
Blaise rolled his eyes. Just last summer he'd gotten to second base with Daphne Greengrass; he was  _quite_  capable, thankyouverymuch. "Why didn't you bring her along instead, then?" At the look his father gave him, Blaise raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"  
  
"Your mother," his father hedged. "Um. They might have-- they might have gotten her, actually."  
  
" _What?_ "  
  
***  
  
Here was the problem: technically, his father was not his father yet. Or his stepfather. Between forms he was supposed to allocate some time between for the requisite courting of his mother, a rule that Blaise privately thinks was instituted only because his mother liked the attention (as well as making his father jump through hoops for her). They'd been engaged not too long ago, but again, an engagement was only a promise, and promises are meant to be broken.  
  
"Why isn't she attracted to  _you_?" Blaise demanded. This didn't make sense-- his parents were always,  _always_  attached at the hip. Had the Cupidae's shot been fired, the natural first person his mother should have seen was his father.  
  
"Ministry gathering, there was a crowd involved-- the whole Ministry's a mess, to be honest," his father said. "Anyway, I've locked her up in a room away from Fudge--"  
  
"She wants to shag the  _Minister_?" Blaise roared.  
  
"And Fudge wants to shag Umbridge; it's all a huge mess, really," his father explained. "And if they don't consummate within twenty-four hours the Cupidae consume  _their_  life force--"  
  
Blaise felt ill. This was a horrible, terrible, convolutedly  _sick_  game of Shag-Marry-Cliff. "So what's the plan?"  
  
"The plan?" his father asked, as though he'd never heard the word before.  
  
Blaise groaned. Of bloody course. He grit his teeth, gripped his wand, and prepared to follow his father's lead. It's killed his father a few times before, but maybe in his next form he'll get rid of the bowties. (They weren't cool, no matter how much he claimed they were.)  
  
"Fine," Blaise said. "After you."  
  
His father beamed. "Attaboy, Blaise. Hey, did I ever tell you why your middle name was Alonso?"


End file.
